Palestinians Deserve Rights, Including Right To Return

Mazin Qumsiyeh

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

“Recent calls for the Palestinians to abandon their right to go home should not be acceptable to anyone with elemental knowledge of legality and morality.

The British ‘mandate’ to fulfill Lord Balfour’s promise of a Jewish homeland in populated Palestine (which had a minority Jewish presence of 7 percent at the time) was implemented by force without consulting the wishes of the Palestinian inhabitants.

Jewish land ownership at the eve of the British-inspired, American-pushed declaration of dividing Palestine into a ‘Jewish state’ (55 percent of the land) and an ‘Arab state’ (45 percent) in 1947 was less than 8 percent of all privately held lands. From that time forward, Zionists have methodically altered the character of the land and the people.

As a result of sometimes ingenious and other times brutal ways of ethnic cleansing, over 95 percent of Palestinian families (Muslim and Christian) have lost lands or homes to Zionists. This is not a Palestinian story but a fact attested to by Israeli historians themselves and in the published words and documents of Israeli leaders.

Israel/Palestine now has about 4.5 million Jews and 3.7 million Christians and Muslims. Of the 8 million Palestinians in the world, more than 5 million are refugees or ‘displaced persons.’

A quarter of Israel’s 1.2 million ‘Gentile’ citizens are considered by the Israeli legal system as ‘present absentees’ and their land is confiscated.

Lands and homes vacated by Christian and Muslim refugees and ‘absentees’ are considered state property and turned over to the Jewish agency that administers the land and leases it only to Jews. Palestinians are treated much worse than blacks were in South Africa under apartheid.

Incomplete success of ethnic cleansing led Israeli governments to attempt to isolate Palestinians in bantustans (homelands) and to ensure that refugees never return (3,000 were killed trying to ‘infiltrate’ back before fences were put up).

The 30-year-old Israeli-American solution to the Palestinian ‘problem’ was reinvented at Oslo and re-presented lately by Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Clinton as final deals to Palestinians.

Modeled after apartheid in South Africa, it envisions no return of refugees and disjointed segments of a demilitarized ‘Palestine,’ without control of natural resources or borders surrounded by the Israeli army and settlements. But even if Arafat agrees to this sham ‘peace,’ it cannot last.

Palestinian refugees know their return is an inalienable, individual and collective right supported by international law and morality. Research has also shown return to be feasible and not a threat to other. On the contrary, no lasting peace can occur without it; annulling it would set a precedent in international law.

Israel also needs to evolve from a Jewish state to a state of its citizens. It is only logical to expect that the current Palestinian citizens of Israel (and secular Israelis in general) are not thrilled to stand in awe at a national anthem that talks about Jewish yearning for a homeland.

They are not keen about a state that has no constitution to protect Gentiles but rather has specific laws to discriminate against them and insure Jewish-only settlements continue to flourish while Arab towns and villages are destroyed or strangled.

They are not content with an Israeli law of return giving automatic citizenship to any Jew in the world who desires it while denying return to people born and raised there for generations simply for being Gentile (many of them relatives of those Palestinians remaining and who have not seen each other in 52 years).

Why does the U.S. government give more money to Israel than it gives to any state in the union? And why do we fund the Israeli military oppression of Palestinian Muslims and Christians?… They still prefer to talk about everything from geopolitics to religion but not address basic human rights and true coexistence in equality.

It is time for U.S. citizens to demand a change.”

Context added by this archive

A Palestinian academic given the op-ed page. The paper identifies him: director of cytogenetics services at the Yale University School of Medicine, and chairman of the media committee of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

Cite this clipping

"Palestinians Deserve Rights, Including Right To Return," Hartford Courant, 23 January 2001, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2001-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2001-002